Pico-Janitor
You’re on the rescue! Your darling was kidnapped by some pesky bugs, and it’s your job to save her from her prison!
Use your broom to clean your way through 30 levels, and throw it to kill the bugs that will get in your way!
GAME MODES
No matter what you choose, make sure to create a strategy to reach the goal!
- Arcade: Play for the highest score, dashing through the levels before it's too late!
- Time: Play for the fastest time, adjusting your strategies to maximize movement over combat!
- Zen: Replay one level over and over, to rework the tactics to use in Arcade or Time mode!
CONTROLS
| Phone | PC | Action |
|---|---|---|
  | Left/Right | Move |
 | X/ V / Space bar | Jump |
 | Z / C | Throw Broom |
| START | Enter | Open game menu |
INFORMATION
This game is released with CC BY-NC 4.0 licence, which allows you to freely edit and share the game for non-commercial projects as described here.
The PICO-8 cartridge (and its source code) can be downloaded for free in the files down below!
CREDITS
- Game design, code and assets: by me (PeterPlaty)
- Music: Radetzky March (by Strauss) and La Campanella (by Liszt)
Special thanks to Helen and all of my friends,
this project wouldn't have been possible without your help!
And thank you for checking out my game! ♥
Download
Install instructions
Download and run the file for your platform. The .p8.png file requires PICO-8 to be run.
External code editing software is suggested to modify the source code, given the game's size.
Development log
- Version 1.1 is out!Aug 28, 2024
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Gotta say that game is a blast, really well polished and the idea is very solid.
This game is really good! It is hard and I didn't have the patience to deal with how easily you can get in a situation, where you can only "hold on", and you can't progress due to constant bug spawn, but it's really decent!
I loved this. Great, original game. Feels very much like a classic 80s arcade game. Had a blast with arcade mode, next up, Time Mode! :)
Great game, I had fun! I really like this concept for an arcade-style game -- it's a nice mix of familiar and creative. I played all 30 levels and the mechanics all worked very nicely, I liked the different enemies, and it had nice music/sound, too.
In terms of (hopefully helpful) feedback, I'd say the balancing could use some tweaks. One can make a ton of progress in the opening seconds, but once more than one enemy launches, the difficulty goes up very sharply. As a result, I learned that in many cases, it's better to cover a lot of ground right away, and if more than one enemy gets loose, to just die. One can generally defeat the round quickly after that, because the progress carries over. Choosing a free life upgrade, together with point bonus lives, is more than enough to make this a workable approach (on my first try at the game, I finished with 14 spare lives). Perhaps shortening the pre-enemy period, or erasing progress at each death, together with less frequent release of enemies, would smooth out the difficulty? I wasn't able to make the extra broom a big advantage, but maybe I just needed work at it. The extra life was too valuable to pass up, because of that opening pre-enemy time for each life.
Again, awesome game!
First of all, thanks for playing! And second of all, thanks for the feedback! :)
I fully understand what you mean, and with playtests, not resetting the level at death (and adding a death counter) was a non-punishing system to encourage casual players to play and and hardcore players to make self-imposed challenges!
Either way, I'll work on balancing on future games :)
Thanks once more for leaving a review!
Very challenging but very fun